Contacts Archive - Can't Import, it's all blank!

[macrlz9]

I've been periodically backing up my contacts by exporting a "Contacts Archive" for years... 2010 is my earliest archive. I'm trying to find an old contact so I created a new user account, double-click the archive file which lets me know that all data will be replaced. No problem since this is a test user account.

Then everything in the Contacts app is blank. Not a single contact. This happen with every single backup file I have.

I even switched back to my main user, exported a brand new "Contacts - 07-20-2023.abbu" file and the same issue occurs. So that tells me the backup files aren't corrupted.

I can right click > show package contents on the .abbu file and quick look each individual "XXX.abcdp" file and see all of the contact info but clicking "add to contacts" does nothing.

I've been googling all day and cannot figure out how to get these contacts converted to a VCF or some other format or some way of opening this archive so I can export it in a more friendly format.

Found this article which describes my issue exactly but doesn't really offer a solution:

A Cautionary Tale About Contacts and Backups

On episode 306 of Mac Power Users, David and Katie talked about contacts on OS X and iOS, including a discussion of Interact, which sounds pretty much like the app that Apple should have built for contacts on iOS. They also mentioned Contacts Cleaner which I consider an indispensable tool for...

www.macstories.net

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[herbert7265]

Not sure if this is the solution and may help, but have a look at the potential solution the second last posting explains:

How to access data from a Mac Contacts backup: a .abbu file

After I back-up Mac Contacts to a .abbu file, is there a program that lets me get at the underlying data vs. just importing them? I.e., can I open them as a text file or .CSV. Thank you!

apple.stackexchange.com

This post describes another method, nevertheless it also points out that the iCloud sync needs to be halted:

Importing Contacts from an .abbu backup (… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Herbert

 

[Weaselboy]

Here is an idea.... put the archive in the Shared folder. Then make a new user account make sure you do not turn on iCloud or login with an AppleID.

Now import the archive into contacts. Then select all and export as a vcard file. Put that in the Shared folder then log back into your main account and import the vcf file.

 

[macrlz9]

Not sure if this is the solution and may help, but have a look at the potential solution the second last posting explains:

How to access data from a Mac Contacts backup: a .abbu file

After I back-up Mac Contacts to a .abbu file, is there a program that lets me get at the underlying data vs. just importing them? I.e., can I open them as a text file or .CSV. Thank you!

apple.stackexchange.com

This post describes another method, nevertheless it also points out that the iCloud sync needs to be halted:

Importing Contacts from an .abbu backup (… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Herbert

The second link doesn't apply in this case since I'm using a new test user account not signed into iCloud.
I'm starting to dabble with SQLite in the first link. Don't know anything about it and it's super annoying but this might be the only way.

Here is an idea.... put the archive in the Shared folder. Then make a new user account make sure you do not turn on iCloud or login with an AppleID.

Now import the archive into contacts. Then select all and export as a vcard file. Put that in the Shared folder then log back into your main account and import the vcf file.

I am doing all of this in a new user account not signed into iCloud. When importing the contact archive file, it's just blank & nothing will import. In a perfect world, I would have opened the archive in a test user & exported as VCF as you said.

 

[macrlz9]

Ultimately I don't need these to be usable vCards, I just want the data... I periodically backup then purge contacts I don't think I will ever need again but I keep these backups around incase I do randomly need an old phone number, email, address, etc that I thought I would never need again.

So if I can take the contacts and put em into a CVS or spreadsheet, that will be fine by me.

I'm just so frustrated that this is a feature that has existed for many many years, decades even and it simply doesn't work. It's reproducible. If you go make an archive right now and try to import it on another machine or test user account, it will be blank. WTF!

 

[herbert7265]

Ultimately I don't need these to be usable vCards, I just want the data... I periodically backup then purge contacts I don't think I will ever need again but I keep these backups around incase I do randomly need an old phone number, email, address, etc that I thought I would never need again.

So if I can take the contacts and put em into a CVS or spreadsheet, that will be fine by me.

I'm just so frustrated that this is a feature that has existed for many many years, decades even and it simply doesn't work. It's reproducible. If you go make an archive right now and try to import it on another machine or test user account, it will be blank. WTF!

Just did some trials and found a solution. But as I have a dentist appointment in a few minutes and explaining the solution will take a few minutes you may need still a little bit of patience...!

Herbert

 

[macrlz9]

Just did some trials and found a solution. But as I have a dentist appointment in a few minutes and explaining the solution will take a few minutes you may need still a little bit of patience...!

Herbert

Very kind of you to take your personal time to try and find a solution. I appreciate it very much!

 

[herbert7265]

So, here we go...!

Important: I did everything under my own Apple ID, not as a Guest user! I performed all activities in the Contacts app on my computer!

First of all I had to create a Contacts Archive, as I never used this functionality before. To play safe I created therefore some test contact cards in my contacts.

Then, after some trial and error I figured out the following procedure that worked for me:

1) Select all your original (actual) contacts and export them (back them up!!!) as vCard!
2) Delete all your contacts in your Contacts app!
3) Disable Contacts in iCloud (in System Settings)!
4) Import your Contacts Archive! ATTENTION: After you import the archive the contacts app will still appear empty!
5) Enable again Contacts in iCloud! In my case the contact cards of the archive appeared now in the Contacts app!

ATTENTION: During all my trials I observed that sometimes the contact cards of the archive appeared, but disappeared again after some time. Sometimes they appeared and did not disappear again. Until now I could not figure out what was going on in here and why!
Therefore I always selected all the contact cards of the archive directly after they appeared and exported them also as vCard!

From here, in case it also works for you, you have then different possibilities to go on:
- In case the archive contacts did not again disappear you can then import again your original contact vCard and merge the information by the Review Duplicates functionality in the Import process.
- In case the archive contacts did disappear, but you have already exported them as vCard, you simply can import as well your original contacts as the archive contacts and again merge them.
- In case you have a lot of contact cards you may want just to select the important contacts from your archive and do the update of your original contacts manually, or again by the merge functionality, after you have imported your original contacts again.

Doing all this testing I always verified the success of imports and data actualization either on my iPad or directly in iCloud in my browser. Keep in mind that it sometimes can take a while until the information is synchronized everywhere.

Curious if this now also works for you!

Herbert

 

[NoBoMac]

Not a solution, but might have a hint to why not working and kinda lines up with previous post:

Doing a quick look at the SQLite database that gets generated in an archive, looks like there are some iCloud hooks in there that might prevent seeing the card. There seem to be some very AppleID specific fields in there, so a guest/fake account with no AppleID might not import the card due to info is pointing to a different user's account. Snippet of a dump:

'/1234567890/carddavhome/card/','NDkzODdhNTktZGRmOC00MWZmLThlZDctODA5Yjg0ZDVmMmIy.vcf'

A guess.

And why I also dump my Contacts as a vCard file, for these odd situations and for portability to non-Apple alternatives.

 

[macrlz9]

So, here we go...!

Important: I did everything under my own Apple ID, not as a Guest user! I performed all activities in the Contacts app on my computer!

First of all I had to create a Contacts Archive, as I never used this functionality before. To play safe I created therefore some test contact cards in my contacts.

Then, after some trial and error I figured out the following procedure that worked for me:

1) Select all your original (actual) contacts and export them (back them up!!!) as vCard!
2) Delete all your contacts in your Contacts app!
3) Disable Contacts in iCloud (in System Settings)!
4) Import your Contacts Archive! ATTENTION: After you import the archive the contacts app will still appear empty!
5) Enable again Contacts in iCloud! In my case the contact cards of the archive appeared now in the Contacts app!

ATTENTION: During all my trials I observed that sometimes the contact cards of the archive appeared, but disappeared again after some time. Sometimes they appeared and did not disappear again. Until now I could not figure out what was going on in here and why!
Therefore I always selected all the contact cards of the archive directly after they appeared and exported them also as vCard!

From here, in case it also works for you, you have then different possibilities to go on:
- In case the archive contacts did not again disappear you can then import again your original contact vCard and merge the information by the Review Duplicates functionality in the Import process.
- In case the archive contacts did disappear, but you have already exported them as vCard, you simply can import as well your original contacts as the archive contacts and again merge them.
- In case you have a lot of contact cards you may want just to select the important contacts from your archive and do the update of your original contacts manually, or again by the merge functionality, after you have imported your original contacts again.

Doing all this testing I always verified the success of imports and data actualization either on my iPad or directly in iCloud in my browser. Keep in mind that it sometimes can take a while until the information is synchronized everywhere.

Curious if this now also works for you!

Herbert

Wowza! I’m out of town but I remoted into my machine to give this a shot. I’m still too scared to mess with my own contacts on my main Apple ID but I followed these directions with a test user account & an old Apple ID that I no longer use and I was able to import the contacts!!

I now plan to import each archive I’ve made over the years one at a time and export as vCard and will never use this proprietary Contacts Archive feature again! Who would have thought that a Contacts Archive has anything to do with iCloud!? So bizarre to me.

Will never forget your help, thank you SO much! ❤️

 

[herbert7265]

You are very welcome!

Good to read that this process also works for you, even it’s a little cumbersome!

What I personally learned out of this exercise: I will back up my contacts periodically as vCards, that’s the most flexible solution! No sense to back it up in the archive format and later on you still need to do the conversion into vCards.

Herbert

 

[macrlz9]

Alright so I'm back home and have been playing around with this today and have some observations.

I used a test user account and a test Apple ID. Following @herbert7265 instructions, I was able to import my contacts and then export as vCards. (I also made a quick Automator Workflow to export each contact as a separate .vcf)

The only difference is after switching iCloud Contacts back on, I had to log out and log back into the test user but they showed up instantly.

Everything was going swimmingly until I came to my archive dated 7-10-2012. Blank. No matter what I do, it's still blank. The last working archive was dated 10-5-2011... This got me thinking of what changed between those dates.
Well, the only thing I can think of is the launch of iCloud on 10-12-2011 (I probably made a backup just before the conversion after being jaded by MobileMe.) iCloud/MobileMe may have nothing to do with it but something definitely changed from one archive to the next, possibly a Mac OS X update.

Anyway, prompted by @NoBoMac I used BBEdit and dug into an identical contact in both archive files and found differences. Theres a whole section at the bottom of each contact that doesn't exist in the older archives... I'm betting this is causing the problem I'm just not sure what to try next. I can't confirm for sure but I believe I'm using the same Apple ID I used at the time but I can't be 100%.

Screenshot shows a contact on the left from 2011 (before iCloud) & 2012 on the right (after iCloud)

Thoughts?

 

[herbert7265]

Everything was going swimmingly until I came to my archive dated 7-10-2012. Blank. No matter what I do, it's still blank. The last working archive was dated 10-5-2011... This got me thinking of what changed between those dates.
Well, the only thing I can think of is the launch of iCloud on 10-12-2011 (I probably made a backup just before the conversion after being jaded by MobileMe.) iCloud/MobileMe may have nothing to do with it but something definitely changed from one archive to the next, possibly a Mac OS X update.

That’s interesting…!

I dare to doubt that iCloud, means the introduction of it, has anything to do with the different behavior of the archives. You may remember, I did all my testing most recently, means also with iCloud in place.

Your assumption regarding the potential influence of a MacOS update, that may be a possibility, but I am not sure about that.

On the other side, there are two indicators that also could be considered: You are working on a test user account with an old Apple ID, right? So, maybe the archives have been created with different Apple IDs and that has an impact, for example because an archive may be (???) connected to an Apple ID? Or using a test user account has, for whatever unknown reason, an impact in here?

What about you try in a first (next) step the same procedure with your actual Apple ID? Or did you have even more Apple IDs in the past? If you still would remember them you may also want to try them.

Herbert

 

[macrlz9]

Ok so I admit I was nervous to mess with my real macOS user account and iCloud data but I went ahead in an effort to get to the bottom of this. Ultimately I was able to successfully import Address Book archives from 10-2011 and older as well as Contacts Archives from 11-2021 to today, however, Archives from 7-2012 through 5-2021 are still blank.

I verified and am absolutely sure I’ve been using the same Apple ID I have now since sometime in 2011 so I can eliminate that as a factor.

I have another theory. I stated before that Address Book archives from 2011 & older import just fine in a test user account. I didn’t even need to toggle iCloud on, logging out and back into the user account worked. It seems that something with the archive’s database changed with OS X Mountain Lion (when Address Book changed to Contacts - I know this is just a name but perhaps there were more changes. Evidence being the additional lines in the SQL database files)

I wonder if it’s machine specific. An archive can only be re-imported on the same machine & OS install.

Unless there are other ideas, I’m just going to have to leave it at this and move forward…


PS I did learn a cool trick. If you want to export your contacts as individual vCard files instead of as single file, simply select all contacts, hold option, and drag to the desktop.